Beginner Tips
Introduction This guide has been written to answer some of the more common questions that new players typically ask over their first few hours of play. The page is organised so that things you're likely to want to know early are at the top, while many of the sections towards the bottom will make more sense after you have been playing for a day or two. You do not ''need to read and memorise everything here, however we suggest that you bookmark this page so that you can revisit it as questions arise. Note that these tips should be read in conjunction with the official game guide. The official game guide comprehensively explains many of the game's basic concepts and terminology. What hime type is best? You may have received some advanced patterns when you joined up, and many new players ask which is the best hime type to summon. Although you can't really go wrong with any class, the most balanced/flexible classes, and therefore arguably the most useful for a new player, are spear, sword and then magic in that order. Your team will also need 1-2 good recovery himes, and a good recovery hime will last you for a very long time in this game. Note that there are almost no circumstances where more than two recovery himes will be useful. Axe and bow himes are, on balance, more suited to end-game tactics as their low hit points leave them vulnerable to an early death unless appropriately buffed. If you receive a particularly good axe or bow as a random summon, however, don't be afraid to use them. Leveling himes In the early game, the main way to gain experience for your himes will be running dungeons. Battles will grant all conscious ('alive') Himes experience until the experience bar is full. Himes in the back row (the lower row of himes) also gain experience even if they don't otherwise participate in the battle. Himes made unconscious ('killed') during a battle do not gain any experience. Once a hime's experience bar is full you will need to feed the hime a monster to actually level her up (experience brushes also work, but you won't see many of these for a while). Feeding your hime monster cards (or experience brushes) will also gain her experience. Unity To get further in the game you will want to acquire more himes and '''unity' them together to climb the ranking ladder and make more powerful himes. Your first unity will require leveling two identical himes up to level 5. Higher tier himes need to be level 10 before they can be used as a unity pair. Protip: use Hime Special Unity until you have a good team. Ignore the +1 option under unity, this is only useful for end-game play. Chance of success Every unity has a base chance of success. For basic himes, this starts at 80%, and is lower for higher level himes. You can sacrifice up to seven monsters or other himes from your deck to increase your chance of success. Monsters that increase unity chance by 1% and 2% are very common, 3% is less common and 4% and above are relatively rare. Note that all materials used to boost your chance of success are lost during the unity, regardless of whether it succeeds or not. To reach 100% you might aim for a combination of boosts like 2%, 2%, 2%, 3%, 3%, 4%, 4%, or whatever other combination you can put together from the materials you have available. Forest of Wood God and Dragon Temple are good sources of 4% unity materials. You can also use himes as consumables to increase the chance of a successful unity. Leveling a hime to 6 will improve its boost by +1% (so a Variant Basic that is normally 7% becomes 8% boost at level 6 and above). Generally, however, new players will be better off conserving their himes and farming for monsters that offer +4% unity success chance instead. Attempting to unity any hime with a success chance of less than 100% is a gamble that may result in you losing your secondary hime and all materials. Even a 99% chance still leaves a 1% chance of failure. For most beginners, himes are too scarce to risk losing to a poor result from the random number generator. Aim for a 100% on all your unities or risk joining the '99% club'. Buffs (skills and other boosts) You will hear a lot about 'brushing' himes. For most players, there is no real need to worry about this until at least level eight. By this time you will have a better idea of what the game is about and you can ask guild mates or refer to this wiki for the finer details. The one thing you will need to know, however, is that when uniting only buffs and one skill (slot 1) on the primary hime transfer to the new hime. All buffs and skills on the secondary hime, and any skill in slot 2 on the primary hime, are lost. Until you know what you're doing, it's best to limit any stat boosts (brushes, medicine, tools) to a single primary hime within a class to minimise the risk of accidentally losing these stats later. What should I do first? Work towards uniting your basics into a decent team of elites or better. This shouldn't be as hard as it sounds, as for most basics the materials are fairly easy to come by (see Hime Special Unity). Many dungeons are best attempted with himes of one or two types only (spear/bow, sword/axe and magic). Early on, it is useful to aim be able to field five himes of each set (5x spear/bow, 5x sword/axe and 5x magic) plus two recovery, so you have the flexibility to tailor your team to any dungeon. Follow the main quest line. This is fairly straight forward, and the first few levels quite fast paced. Completing particular quests is how you (the player) level up. Leveling up also comes with increased action points, which in turn assists you to progress more quickly. Sculptor Mountain is a good dungeon in which to level basic himes. A mixed team of level 3 and 4 himes and a Tennyo will usually beat it four out of five times. Add Rusty Silver Mine to your daily dungeon roster. This dungeon is quick and relatively easy, and unlike most other dungeons awards silver for successful runs. The silver you accumulate here will be handy later on, or can be used to purchase patterns of basic race from the shop. Rusty Silver Mine is capped at a maximum of five runs, per player, per day. Get on the weekly ranking board for ranked dungeons. To see this week's ranked dungeons click on the ranking book > battles tab > then on the gold coloured dungeon dots. In most cases, getting on the ranking board is rewarded with extra silver. Rewards are emailed to your in-game email box each Wednesday, 5:00 server time. Join a guild. You will be forced to early in your quest line anyhow, but there is no reason not to do so earlier. Established guilds will offer a number of percentage boosts to your stats, and are good sources of helpful advice. More or less every guild is recruiting, all the time. If you are lost about which guild to apply for see the guild rankings. Most of the top 15 guilds are active and friendly. Note that if a guild leader isn't online it may take a few hours for a guild to accept your application - if you'd like a guild immediately advertise in world chat. Try to log in every day, even if you don't have time to play, as daily login bonuses can be invaluable. Also, as total guild membership is capped, in order to make room for new recruits many guilds will purge inactive low level members after as little as three days. Collect an Apricot Bonsai Pot from Stone Road to the Mountain Top, and an Sakura Bonsai Pot from Stone Mine at the Mountain Top, and put both in your garden so that you can start collecting apricots and cherries. These materials can take a lot of time to accumulate but are essential for uniting advanced himes (see Hime Special Unity), therefore the earlier you start collecting them the better. Start collecting Guide Book I to level up your Rice Ball Shop and Pharmacy. (Forest of Wood God is a good source of guide books, and also drops 4% unity materials.) Level up and start collecting stat brushes from your farm. (310-all is a very commonly used recipe.) Getting more basic himes Receiving more Himes is possibly the biggest bottleneck in the early game, here are a few ways to earn more. 1. Pattern of Basic Race '-' '''This item lets you summon a basic hime of your choice (through the quest > pattern menu). The pattern can be purchased at the shop for 3200 Silver or 80,000 Bronze coins. '''2. Bronze summons - The chance of getting a shkihime from a bronze ticket is about 2%. This means that you will normally expect to receive one basic hime for every five "packs of ten" you summon, however this rate may be modified in various ways by weekly events. After bronze summoning, many advanced players will use the "sell monsters" button (accessed from the card tab) to earn more coin, which can in turn be spent on more bronze summons and (potentially) more basic himes. 3.Traveling ' - An option under the garden tab is to send one of your himes out 'traveling' for up to eight hours at a time. After 24 total hours travelled per type (sword, spear, magic, etc.) you will gain a free basic hime and the counter resets. Himes that travel earn XP depending on their level, so level 9 himes earn the most (roughly 1000 XP per hour). You should aim to have one of your himes traveling at all times. *'Current EXP - Shows the Hime's current experience points. *'EXP after return' - Shows the expected experience gained after the Hime's return. 4. Farming - On your Farm, manure recipies starting from 310-all have a chance of growing a pattern of basic race. Manure recipe 600-500-500-600-500 has a high chance of growing a pattern of basic race. 5. Quests and trials - Some quests, daily/weekly trials and events may offer a pattern of basic race as a reward. '6. From guild bosses '- Guild members receive a free Pattern of Basic Race each day from the first guild boss killed (ask your guild leader about this). To receive this pattern you must: #be at least level 6; and #have bought Pattern of Basic Race from shop at least once, and then exchanged it in the quest page for a hime. Note that you will not receive a pattern on the day you join the guild. The day resets at 00:00 server time (see time stamp on right of chat messages), with the pattern awarded immediately the guild kills its first boss. Combat Combat affinity Shikihime Garden combat uses a rock, paper, scissors mechanic. In colour terms: green > blue, red > green, blue > red. A color triangle representing this is displayed before every level of a dungeon on the top right, before you press the 'attack' button, to enable you to decide whether to swap any front row himes for thos on the back row with better affinities. Combat formula Example: Damage Rating: A bow type will do 1.2 times more damage to a magic type than to another bow type. The mage type will do 0.6 times the amount of normal damage to the bow/spear type. Damage is [ (Attack / 2) - (Defense/4) ] * AffinityMultiplier * Number of attacks * Crit Multiplier The affinity multiplier is 1.2 if favorable, 0.6 if not. Double tapping Double tapping means that the attacker gets a second attack, doubling the damage inflicted. Double tapping triggers if an attacker has at least twice the agility (AGI) of the defender. For example, a monster or hime with 300 AGI will double tap if its opponent has 150 AGI or less, and won't double-tap if its opponent has agility of 151 or more. Healer management Many players find healing in Shikihime Garden frustrating. As hime actions are more or less completely random, your healer is just as likely to attack as she is to heal herself or another hime. In practice, the only reliable healing you will get is an area of effect (AOE) heal at the end of each floor. To take advantage of this, place one or two healers (and only healers) in your backrow and bring them out just prior to last hits. By having only healers in your backrow you guarantee that you will draw a healer when you need one, while maintaining a maximum damage (DPS) front row to take down monsters quickly. Medicines and tools Medicines and tools (weapons) have a very low chance (around 5%) of increasing one of the hime's stats by a point. Place medicine and tools on the ground in your garden and himes will eat them if their 'eat' action has been unlocked. Eat is unlocked by having owned two of the same type hime at any time (doesn't have to be simultaneously). To check if eat is unlocked check the hime entry in the catalogue tab. If you watch a hime eat you will know if the medicine or tool has worked because numbers appear over the himes head (both +1 and -10). If no numbers appear the boost has not been successful. If only a -10 appears the hime is at the tool/medicine cap and this stat can't be raised any higher (the medicine/tool is still lost). Many players make a small cage out of rocks, or similar, that a hime can't escape from. Putting both the medicine/tools and hime in the cage will speed up eating and ensure that your preferred hime gets the boost. A higher impression score (shown as a heart symbol) improves a hime's chance of actually picking up the medicine or tool to eat, however a hime with even 0 impression will eventually eat if trapped in a cage (although this may require a fair bit of patience). You can obtain medicine from the Pharmacy/Pharmacy of Orihime, or from your farm. Tools are typically drops from dungeons or your farm. What do I do with these items? Flute of Yambiko and Fang of Nozuchi: These are used to call once-a-day bosses for your guild to fight. Note that these bosses are very powerful and will require several other guild members to fight them. Most guilds request that you do not ''devote (guild tab > devote place) without first seeking permission from a guild leader. 'Devoting' the final item needed to call a guild boss calls that boss immediately. Apricot: Get 3 every 24 hours (Can upgrade with Guide Books II x 20 for reduce time into 18 hrs.). 40 apricot are part of the materials required to fuse variant basics into variant elites as a Hime Special Unity. Cherry: Get 1 every 24 hours (Can upgrade with Guide Books II x 30 for reduce time into 18 hrs.). 40 cherry are part of the materials required to craft an extremely rare hime. See this guide. Yuzu: Get 1 every 24 hours. 40 yuzu are part of the materials required to craft a superior ex.rare hime. What should I do later? Once you progress to map 2, pick up a Yuzu Bonsai Pot from Mysterious Lake at your first opportunity, so you can start accumulating Yuzu. Collect Guide Book II to level up your Rice Ball Shop, Pharmacy, Sakura Bonsai Pot and Apricot Bonsai Pot. Start brushing your himes. Silver Silver is used for purchasing ornaments for your garden and consumables (such as basic patterns, and ap recovery pills) from the shop. Silver is acquired by *Selling a hime, which gives you silver depending on the rarity of the card (2000 for basic, 3000 for variant basic, etc.). *Farming at Rusty Silver Mine, a dungeon limited to five runs a day for 160 silver each run (5 x 160 = 800 daily). *Weekly ranking prize for most ranked dungeons. To see this week's ranked dungeons click on the ranking book > battles tab > then on the gold coloured dungeon dots. In most cases, getting on the ranking board is rewarded with extra silver. Rewards are emailed to your in-game email account each Wednesday, 5:00 server time. Gold Gold is used for Foreign Hime summons (such as a Reaper or a Valkyrie) and for some purchases in the shop. Gold is acquired by *Visiting other player's gardens ('visit' tab) and petting one of their himes. You can do this five times per day for a total of 50 gold. Note that gold is not credited until you return to main screen. *Sending your himes training (PVP) five times a day. Note that the percentage displayed is the opponent’s previous win/loss ratio, so lower percentages usually (but not always) mean you are more likely to win. There is a gold bonus for win streaks, however streaks do not carry over to the next day. The player rating is calculated as attacks won + defenses won / total attacks + total defences, rounded down. * Participating in 'devote' guild boss fights (although the amount is relatively insignificant - particularly for a new player). * Completing the daily trial 'level love'. Note that although foreign himes are not the most powerful units in the game, they have good base stats and can often be found in well rounded decks. As gold is the main way to collect foreign himes, and gold supply is extremely limited, collecting foreigns early will keep your end-game options open as it is likely that future updates to the game will expand the foreign upgrade path. Maximising the game screen In most popular browsers, press F11 to make the game take up your full screen. If F11 doesn't work in the first instance, click just outside the main green box and try again. Pressing F11 again reverts back to normal screen mode. General *Turn on ''Lock to avoid moving furniture by mistake. *Zoom in/out your browser to adjust play area (Control +/- or hold control and mouse wheel forward/back). *Watch your experience cap. You will not always receive a notice if you've reached it. *Monster cards die permanently if they fall in battle, himes and special monsters do not. * Himes and monsters fully heal when they level up. * Monster cards can't be healed outside of battle, however you can run damaged monsters with a healer through a beginner dungeon to heal them if you need. Category:Guides